


pieces of you

by carnival_Souls



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Drug Use, M/M, basically them being emo about each other throughout the years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 12:25:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15606231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_Souls/pseuds/carnival_Souls
Summary: Eight years is a long time.





	pieces of you

No matter how many times Boris closes and reopens his eyes, none of what just happened feels real. One moment Potter is here, next minute—poof, gone, taking the past two years with him. He casts his eyes to the streetlights in the distance and feels himself dissociating. He forgets that he is standing in the street, that it is late at night, that he is even on this plane of existence. It’s like he is two different bodies. One part of him is standing here, a blank, suddenly empty slate with an ache in his chest, and the other part of him is just memories and too many feelings that he doesn’t understand. He feels more vulnerable and alone than he ever has.

 

Boris sinks to the ground and hugs his knees to his chest, pulling out a cigarette. He stares up at the stars for a while, letting the smoke rise and fall in his lungs, anchoring himself.  Distantly, he’s aware that he has been crying, has been since the car pulled away, but it’s the lonely desert sky that pushes him over the edge. He’s full-on sobbing, a torrential downpour of tears cascading down his face, choking and gasping, and it’s the only sound that breaks the silence of the night.

 

Once again, he hates himself for getting attached to people he knows he’s going to lose, for even putting himself in this situation. People love you, and then they leave. Or you leave them. Just how it works.

           

_Ty, chertovski idiot! What did you expect?_

           

He feels his feet moving in the direction of his house, but his eyesight is blurry through the haze of tears and drugs, body distantly numb.

           

With unsteady fingers, he unlocks the door and stumbles inside, expecting to see his dad drinking at the table or passed out on the couch or _something._ Not the empty, unsettling sight of nothing but a note on the kitchen table. He leans against a chair to steady himself, and his eyes scan over the note, breath quickening.

           

By the time he’s pounding on the door begging Xandra to let him in, he’s hyperventilating and can barely get his words out. He can’t _breathe._

           

Xandra comes to the door, and he hears her speaking. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. She wraps him in a blanket and takes off his shoes, and then he’s curling himself into a ball on Theo’s bed, still gasping for air. Xandra gives him some medicine and a glass of water, and he falls asleep tucked between two pillows.

           

            <<>>

 

 A few days later, Boris finally goes back to school. He opens his locker, looks at the painting, and slams the door shut again.

 

            <<>>

 

           

School isn’t the same. Sometimes Boris catches himself looking around the room to roll his eyes at Potter when someone says something particularly stupid. Or he catches himself thinking of a joke to tell him later or a question to ask him, and every time he expects him to be there, and every time he’s disappointed. He misses Potter’s daily run of sarcastic commentary, the way he would call Boris out on his bullshit, his fond smile, the way his eyes would light up when he was happy (rare but incredible), his warmth at night, his freckles. But most of all, he misses how much Potter believed in him. No one had ever admired him that much, and it made him feel like he could do anything.

           

He’s smoking a joint after school one day with Kotku she asks out of the blue: “What ever happened to Theo? Did he move or something?”

           

Boris laughs bitterly, heart clenching painfully in his chest. “Who the fuck knows? I don’t care. Is his choice, if he wants to go. Fine.” He exhales a puff of smoke, feeling his head start to spin. Kotku’s lips look redder (like strawberries), and he focuses on the feeling of her thigh pressed against his. Boris leans in closer to her, inhales, opens her mouth with his, exhales. They kiss, smoky sweet taste mingling between their lips. Boris has one hand fisted in her hair and the other gripping her bony hip, dipping beneath the waistband of her jeans. He finally feels like he’s starting to lose himself when she pulls away.

           

“No, Boris, I don’t want to do this right now.”

           

Boris moves away from her and wipes the spit from his mouth. “What do you want then? Us to talk about feelings?” It seems absurdly funny once he says it, and he doubles over laughing.

           

Kotku looks at him sadly and pulls him into a hug. “Yes! What is so funny about that? You never talk about anything you’re feeling, and I’m sick of it! I’m fucking tired of this, Boris.”

           

He feels tears well up in his eyes at the tender contact. “Okay,” he whispers quietly against her shoulder. She listens patiently, brushing calming fingers through his hair, as he tries to explain what he’s feeling. It’s all tangled up inside of him, and it takes forever to unwind all of it (two years of repressed feelings and memories). He chokes on his words so much, and he doesn’t even know if he can explain all of it himself, but he tries.

           

Boris sighs when he’s finished talking and Kotku hands him the joint back.

           

“Wow, you love him a lot, don’t you?” She looks at him in awe, and Boris feels like he revealed too much. “I had no idea.”

           

Boris laughs shakily, “Yeah, too much.”

           

She kisses his forehead and rests her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Boris.”

           

“Me too.”

           

_Feelings…chertovski der'mo._

<<>> 

 

           

Theo is signing up for college classes and scanning through the list mindlessly when his eyes find the foreign language section. _Conversational Russian_ —he feels like he’s been hit with a ton of bricks. The only Russian he knows is the few words and phrases he picked up from Boris. He can still hear the accent clearly in his head, words echoing distantly on his tongue. Boris saying, _“fuck you up the ass”,_ reading pages of _The Idiot_ , talking in Russian when he was drunk, the letters carefully printed on his school notebook. Boris Volodymyrovych Pavlikovsky.

           

He’s so excited about it that he tells Pippa the next time she calls. “Guess what I’m taking this semester?”

           

“Um… I don’t know. It must not be too bad if you sound so happy about it. Whatever could it be?”

           

“Conversational Russian. And they have more than one course if I feel like taking more of it! Cool, right?”

           

Pippa laughs. “Very cool. Theo, are you ever going to pick a major? Why do you need Conversational Russian?”

“I’m working on that, I swear. And, uh, I just thought it would be a useful skill to have.” After saying that, he realizes that he’s never around anyone that speaks Russian on a regular basis, and it’s really _not_ a practical skill that he’ll use much, if ever.

 

“Well, let me know when you’re a fluent Russian speaker,” she teases.

 

“Will do.”

 

The subject changes to Pippa’s classes for the semester, and then she tells him about a band that she’s currently obsessed with. Theo congratulates himself for not sounding like a crazy jealous fuck when she mentions her boyfriend ( _down, demon,_ he tells the envy spiraling in his chest). Oddly enough though, he doesn’t feel as jealous as he normally would.

 

<<>> 

 

Theo rubs at his temples, trying to soothe the tension in his head. He helped Hobie in his shop all day, and now he’s desperately trying to focus on his homework. The words keep swimming around in front of him, fatigue clouding his mind. He didn’t sleep much the night before (he doesn’t sleep much most nights, and when he does, it’s hard to wake up). Instead, he spends his nights listening to music, dozing in and out, and then crashing awake after he has a nightmare. The pills don’t help with sleep as much as they used to. They just make him feel numb, and then he gets trapped inside his thoughts, and he feels like he can’t move. When he doesn’t take them, the world is too bright, too loud, too much. He can’t figure out which is worse.

 

He finally gives up on homework and throws his textbooks on the floor, reaching for the worn-out book on his nightstand instead. The pages are dog-eared and highlighted, and the margins adorned with notes. It was a painstaking process to begin with, reading _The Idiot_ in Russian, and Theo feels like he’s only gotten somewhat better. Boris’ voice echoes in his ears, and he pictures younger Boris reading aloud, draped across Theo’s bed, quoting his favorite parts.

 

“‘Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.’” He reads it aloud in English and repeats it clumsily in Russian.

 

He falls asleep with the book against his chest, and for the first time in a while, he has pleasant dreams.

 

<<>> 

 

Kitsey should be the girl of his dreams. Beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent…everything that younger Theo would have imagined for himself. And maybe in another universe, where everything wasn’t so fucked up, they would work. Maybe they would be perfect together—perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect careers, the whole functional package. Not the distorted mess that they are now.

 

Instead, there’s only this: hopelessly pining over another girl that he can never have and who doesn’t want him. Unbidden memories of a boy in the desert with dark eyes and a wicked grin and warm hands. Grief that never goes away, that’s always lurking right there under the surface of his mind. Holding Kitsey’s hand as they’re walking down the street, her blonde hair glowing underneath the street lamps, and thinking _this should be romantic, feel something, please for the love of God let me feel something just once._ But the hand holding Kitsey’s doesn’t feel like his own, and the smile that doesn’t reach his eyes isn’t his own, and everything’s a fucking mess. He’s living a lie, and he just keeps losing and losing and losing.

 

The first time they have sex, it’s emotionless and detached, and Kitsey gets up to answer her phone immediately afterwards, closing her balcony door behind her.

 

Theo finds it reassuring that maybe he’s not the only one living in this lie.

 

<<>> 

 

Boris doesn’t think about the painting again for a while, but eventually, curiosity and loneliness win him over. He carefully unwraps it, and he’s immediately overwhelmed by it. At first glance—simple painting, just a bird, not much to look at. But then he looks even closer at it, and it’s so beautiful and heart-wrenching that it almost makes him cry. _Because,_ he thinks, _is not just a painting, is also a soul, Potter’s soul_ and he never considered it before, that a painting could feel like a person, but that’s what it feels like. Living and breathing.

 

Looking at it, all he sees is Theo. Woven into the canvas, within the brushstrokes, all around him. He remembers the way Theo talked about it—his secret, something sacred he carried with him, a piece of him. Something you carry with you for that long (and he’s sure of it, that Theo is even carrying it with him now) is bound to take on a life of its own. Potter always felt too much pain for one person, and it makes sense that he would project it somewhere. A painting (a boy) with a life of tragedy.

 

He gives it away eventually, but it never really leaves.

 

_(Theo doesn’t leave.)_

 

<<>> 

 

_“Potter!”_ Theo looks up at him, and Boris feels the air leave his lungs like a punch to the gut. Next thing he knows he is rushing towards him and embracing him. Admittedly, Theo is a lot taller and broader than he was at fifteen, and as much as Boris had tried to imagine what he looked like now, he really couldn’t have prepared himself.

 

_Eight years and now he looks like this? Gorgeous, not fair!_ Boris looks closer at him and notes the dark circles under his eyes ( _still not sleeping enough)_ and the same glasses he’s always worn.

 

He keeps finding excuses to touch him- arm thrown around his shoulder, hands brushing as they walk, leaning in closer to him than necessary, foreheads nearly touching. It feels like playing with fire, fingers dancing too close to the flames, just close enough to feel the warmth.

 

The most dangerous thing about watching Theo walk away from him disappointed and angry is knowing that he would do anything for him, knowing that he would get the painting back for Theo even though it was him who gave it away in the first place. He would fix this.

 

<<>> 

_That escalated quickly._

 

Boris’s vision narrows down to the whiz of bullets and the cold press of a gun against his temple and the terror playing out in Theo’s eyes. He feels the man grip his hair and wrench his head back painfully.

 

He keeps having horrifying, vivid flashes of Theo splayed out on the ground, blood pooling around his body. _Fuck that. Not happening. Potter, run for it, get out of here!_

 

And through the adrenaline-fueled mess of all of it, he can’t help but think it makes sense that this is how it would end. It’s been building for a long time (since he saw a geeky looking teenage boy wearing Harry Potter-esque glasses, looking incredibly lost and out of place, and they sat on the bus together). They both have a knack for being drawn into desolate situations with seemingly no way out, but they’ve made it this far.

 

( _Maybe not this time though.)_

 

Boris ignores the pessimistic voice in his head.

 

<<>> 

 

After all the chaos of Amsterdam and returning the painting, reality feels altered, like they’ve entered a new timeline, and they’ve come full circle. Maybe the universe took pity on them and gave them a do-over, lifted the weight off their shoulders, and set them back on their feet. Maybe they can heal.

 

And when Boris wakes up to find Potter safe and sound in his bed, he _knows_ this is too good to be true. The past few weeks were crazy enough as is.

_Ironic…here we are again, like children, sharing beds. Not entirely different._

 

(Maybe there’s something reassuring about the stability of that.)

 

_“Ya tebe lyublyu,”_ Boris whispers into Theo’s back. He never thought he would say those words so freely or mean them so much. There’s something about the way Potter looks in the mornings that makes his heart tender, all sleepy and warm and vulnerable. It’s not a new feeling, but he has suppressed it for a long time, and now it’s overflowing.

 

He kisses at the top of Potter’s spine, and then he brushes the hair away from his neck to kiss him there. He is kissing along Potter’s jawline when he shifts in his sleep to look up at him blearily.

 

“Boris…” he groans. “I’m trying to sleep.” Theo’s words are exasperated, but he’s smiling fondly.

 

“I can’t help it. You, the true work of art all along! Must be appreciated.” Boris pulls him closer, tucking Potter’s head against his shoulder.

 

Theo snorts. “Glad you think so.” A moment of silence and then: “Your puns are lame.”

 

Boris flicks his forehead. “Rude!”

 

“I love you, too, by the way,” Theo says casually, like the words are already something he’s said a million times, like he was made to say them.

 

“I know _, moye sonechko._ ” Boris runs his fingers through Theo’s hair until he falls asleep again.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this was a mess, but I just kept thinking about how long Boris and Theo went without seeing each other and what a recipe for pining that was, so...here we are. 
> 
> And I got the Ukrainian and Russian words/phrases from google translate, so I'm sorry if it's not accurate. But this is what I meant for Boris to be saying:
> 
> Ty, chertovski idiot! - you fucking idiot!  
> chertovski der'mo- fucking bullshit  
> Ya tebe lyublyu- I love you  
> Moye sonechko- my sunshine


End file.
